Robert Magda: House of the Week: A Country Home Built Like a Barn

Friday, December 11, 2015

House of the Week: A Country Home Built Like a Barn

At first glance, the main home on 38 acres in South Carolina’s Lowcountry looks like it was once a barn.

Even on second glance — what with the old barn wood on the inside and the windmill and candy-apple-red silo in the yard — it just has to be an old barn.

But it’s not. It’s a 3-bedroom, 2-bath home plus a 2,249-square-foot in-law’s loft with all the picture windows and coziness and luxury bathrooms you’d expect from an upscale home built in the 2000s. It’s on the market for $2.45 million.

Listing agent Clark Coker of Homes of the Lowcountry says it’s an ongoing work that the owners, his sister and brother-in-law, adore. At the moment, his sister is figuring out a way to turn the bottom of the silo into the home’s main entrance and the top of it into an office with panoramic views.

The property does have barns: Two were bought in Illinois and West Virginia, broken down and reassembled on this property outside Charleston. Some of the leftover wood was used inside the main home.

One 4,000-square-foot barn was used until recently as an equine therapy facility that has since moved up the road. The other is used for parties, and Coker can attest to how spectacular it is when it’s all lit up with both ends of the barn wide open and fire pits burning.

“We had the family over there for Thanksgiving, and they had a bunch of their friends and business associates for a skeet shoot and bluegrass music, and it was a great time,” he said.

The estate also includes a 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath guesthouse, which can be bought with the estate or separately with about 20 acres from the property.